Ireland Faces Surge in Online Piracy: Over One Million Daily Visits to Illegal Streaming Sites
More than one million visits from Ireland are made to websites offering pirated television, film, and sports content each day, new data reveals, highlighting the massive scale of illegal streaming activity within the country. The figures, provided to RTÉ by piracy monitoring and content-protection firm MUSO, are utilized by organizations like the European Union Intellectual Property Office to track online copyright infringement.
Since 2017, nearly four billion visits originating in Ireland to piracy-related domains have been recorded, peaking in 2023 at 554 million visits. This equates to an average of roughly two visits per week for every internet user in Ireland. MUSO clarifies that each instance of a user accessing a piracy-related website is counted as a single “visit,” with repeat access sessions tallied separately.
According to MUSO’s analysis, piracy trends in Ireland have shifted in recent years. While visits to piracy websites declined steadily between 2017 and 2020, a sharper drop occurred during the pandemic, coinciding with a slowdown in new film and television releases. However, as content production resumed and new streaming platforms like Disney+ and Apple TV entered the Irish market, piracy levels rebounded. Although traffic peaked in 2023, recent data suggests activity has stabilized at levels exceeding those seen before the pandemic.
The majority of this illicit traffic centers around television content, accounting for 2.3 billion visits over the analyzed period. Publishing content drew 647 million visits, while music and software comprised smaller portions. Within the television category, films and TV shows accounted for approximately 71% of visits, with anime representing over 14%. Live sports, while a smaller segment overall, still accounted for more than one in ten visits, or 12%. The most accessed TV title in 2025 was identified as the second season of the anime series Solo Leveling, while the most pirated film was Sinners, starring Michael B. Jordan, Hailee Steinfeld, and Jack O’Connell.
The Persistence of Piracy in a Streaming Era
The sustained high levels of piracy are particularly notable given the continued expansion of the legal streaming market. Dr. Margaret Samahita, a behavioural economist at University College Dublin, attributes this to a confluence of factors, including rising costs, market fragmentation, and a perceived lack of risk among users.
“There’s now an increasing number of streaming platforms available. And while on paper this seems like a good thing, in reality, it just means that the market is becoming more fragmented,” Dr. Samahita explained. “From a purely economic perspective, illegal streaming is a rational and value-maximising response to a market that’s become too expensive and too complicated.”
Beyond economic considerations, Dr. Samahita points to behavioural factors. “The benefits are immediate and salient – free content right now – while the costs are quite abstract and distant. There’s the social element as well – when you know that everyone else is doing it, the moral boundaries start to blur,” she said. “The fairness element might be the biggest driver. People might not see it as stealing in the traditional sense, but rather as correcting an imbalance. They might feel like they’re being charged unfairly high prices for something like watching sport, and so illegal streaming feels justified.”
The Rise of ‘Dodgy Boxes’ and IPTV Services
This dynamic is particularly evident in the growing popularity of so-called “dodgy boxes” – internet-connected devices and applications offering access to pirated television channels and live sports, often through low-cost subscription services. These services, also known as IPTV (Internet Protocol Television) services, are typically marketed online via social media and messaging apps, designed to closely resemble legitimate streaming platforms while delivering pirated content.
These groups actively promote their services with special offers, customer support, and features designed to create an illusion of legitimacy. While quantifying the number of users accessing illegal IPTV services is difficult, the high volume of traffic to piracy websites suggests widespread adoption. These devices rely on the same piracy websites and servers tracked by MUSO, meaning their usage is reflected in overall traffic figures.
Jimmy Doyle, CEO and founder of streaming service Clubber, estimates that piracy is costing his business a substantial portion of its potential revenue – conservatively estimated at 40%, representing hundreds of thousands of potential viewers. Clubber broadcasts live coverage of over 1,500 club GAA matches annually, alongside swimming events and club-level soccer and rugby in the UK.
“I’m a small business trying to get off the ground. We rely on the income that we get from subscribers to ultimately keep the service going. We have to pay the commentators and the videographers to actually deliver the games for us,” Doyle stated. “If we can get to 50 or 60 people who are willing to pay for a game, it covers our core costs. And so if people want that to continue, they have to think hard about, is it fair or not to actually pay us? Because if they don’t, we can’t sustain it and we can’t continue to deliver the service.”
Industry Concerns and the Cost of Illicit Consumption
Major broadcasters and rights holders view piracy as a systemic issue draining revenue from the entire industry. The Audiovisual Anti-Piracy Alliance (AAPA), representing broadcasters including Sky, DAZN, and the Premier League, is actively combating the problem.
“What the pirates are doing is actually stealing someone’s property,” explained Miruna Herovanu, the AAPA’s Executive Director. “We made a study that said that 17 million Europeans use illegal IPTV monthly. These numbers translate into, for example, in Germany, the losses to the industry were €1.8 billion in 2022.” She added, “They [consumers] think it’s a victimless crime, that they’re stealing from the rich. They’re consuming stolen content and they’re consuming it at the price of the same content they’re consuming because there needs to be investment in premium content.”
Despite these warnings, Dr. Samahita suggests many users justify illegal streaming based on convenience and affordability. “There are more subscriptions, different rights and regulations and people get subscription fatigue. They get tired of managing all the logins, all the bills and decisions. For them, shadow consumption might make sense,” she said, defining “shadow consumption” as the use of goods or services outside the legal market. “We’re living under a cost-of-living crisis. For many, discretionary spending like entertainment is one of the easiest things to cut. Many people still want to watch their favourite TV shows and see live sports as a right rather than a luxury. Instead of watching less as prices rise, they’re going to try and look for alternatives, potentially illegal ones.”
For Doyle and Clubber, the question isn’t whether people understand the legal implications of piracy, but whether smaller services can survive in an environment of increasing shadow consumption. His recent efforts to disrupt pirated streams by intentionally broadcasting older games to identify illegal IPTV sources prompted a backlash, with users contacting him to complain about disrupted access, a “wake-up call” demonstrating the scale of the problem. Ultimately, the future of smaller streaming services, and the content they provide, hinges on whether consumers will choose to support legitimate platforms or continue down the path of illicit consumption.
